


Twentieth Christmas

by tatooedlaura



Series: Christmas [21]
Category: The X-Files
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-04-17
Packaged: 2018-10-20 05:08:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10655547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tatooedlaura/pseuds/tatooedlaura
Summary: “Dear Scully,I’m still here as well. Bars are down. Meds are up. I have a cat. She had blue eyes.Love, Mulder.”





	Twentieth Christmas

It arrived in the mail. A small, innocuous box, plain-brown paper, Mulder’s scrawl seared into the address, his oversize S in Scully dwarfing the U that came after.

He always seemed to write it that way, joking once eons ago, before cancer and babies and puzzle tattoos on fish eating circus freaks, that he was the big S curving over her ‘cause she was so small and the little U was her, with her arms upraised in concession, tossing her palms to God asking what she ever did to deserve the crazy person beside her.

He sent her a package on December 12th wrapped in twine with too many stamps, too much tape and not enough of himself.

Sitting in her tiny, non-descript kitchen in the tiny, non-descript apartment she’d rented ten months early when she realized she couldn’t stay with her mother any longer without ruining that relationship as well. Maggie was the most understanding, caring, loving woman on the planet but sometimes Scully just wanted to put on her pajamas, beat the stuffing out of a pillow or three, break a glass and then cry for a bit … nothing big, nothing Earth-shattering but sometimes, really, you just can’t do that while your mother is within spitting distance of you.

She continued to stare at the square sitting precisely in the center of the two person table nestled against the wall. The place hadn’t come furnished and since all her furniture was still at the house with Mulder, she half-heartedly bought the bare essentials, table, couch, TV, mattress for the floor, hangers for the closet. The table wobbled a little but truth be told, she actually liked that. Reminded her in a non-threatening way of her and him … of hotel laminate tables covered in case files, of rickety lives that only stabilized when you leaned on them a little, your elbows pressed down on the table while the table pressed up to your elbows.

If she leaned in just the right way, both were steady.

If her and Mulder leaned against each other correctly, they were stable as well.

But somewhere along the way, they’d just forgotten how.

She stood, knowing she had to leave for work or she’d be late and the moment she stood, the table rocked back to its former tottering self, setting the box on a slight, sideways tilt.

Even after a year of being gone, he still did the same thing to her, sending her off-balance the moment he stopped touching her, holding her steady.

&&&&&&&&&&&&

Mulder debating sending that box to her for nearly two weeks, the thing wrapped and taunting on the table by the front door, harassing him in silence, mocking him, demanding every time he passed by if he was going to send it today or ignore it once again.

Finally, with enough sleep behind him, enough medication in him, he found the nerve to slap on a boatload of stamps he’d found after digging in various kitchen drawers and to walk it to the mailbox. Raising that stupid red flag attached to the box seemed to be the hardest thing he’d done in months. It weighed a ton, squeaked terribly as bits of rust dropped to the ground as he forced it into use, twisting it to signal the mailman that he had something outgoing.

The outdoors set him on edge, being so out there and exposed to the elements as well as low-flying surveillance, long-distance listening devices and red sniper target dots. As he had been taught by his therapist a few months back when he finally began taking the whole psychiatrist thing seriously, he took a deep breath, decided that if they hadn’t gotten him by now, he was probably safe and then, in usual Mulder fashion, did his own farewell gesture to whomever might have him scoped out …

He raised his arm, raised his middle finger, turned slowly in a circle flipping off nature and anyone else in the vicinity, then, lifting his arms further over his head, he committed to giving the finger to the sky as well.

It made his chest puff with short-lived defiance and wearing something akin to a smile for the briefest of moments, he turned and went back in the house, the cold wind cutting through his sweater, the small flakes of snow and ice stinging his face as he hurried inside, wondering not for the first time in the last eight minutes, what Scully was doing.

&&&&&&&&&&&

Coming home from work, she saw the package still quietly sitting there, waiting patiently for her to get off her ass and cut the string, unfold the paper, exam the contents, drink some wine, drink some more wine, destroy another pillow before slipping between her flannel sheets to sleep the sleep of the restless and wondering.

She changed up the order to her evening by drinking the wine first but the rest carried on as planned, the binding wrapped and tied around the box falling away to reveal a plain blue box. Not sure how well she could cope with another unveiling, she shut her eyes and popped the lid, ripping off the bandaid so to speak, peering inside to find white tissue paper next.

Would this nightmare of gift opening ever end?

Top layer removed, she found, once again, a clear, round Christmas ornament, three paper labels inside, words facing outward. Bringing it closer, she let the tears fall as she smiled and read over and over again the names of three prescription drugs all identified clearly as belonging to one Fox Mulder.

&&&&&&&&&&

He didn’t have a phone anymore, cell or home, allowing his firewalls and other encryption to keep his computer on, his email up, his identity quiet. After having roamed the house for an hour, taken a shower using her brand of shampoo and bounced his basketball on the wall until he left a smudge, he briefly wondering what Scully would say about the mark when she got home, then took a deep breath and distracted himself online.

Making sure the built-in camera on his laptop was covered, he then turned his attention to the icon blinking innocently in the corner of the screen; it could be his current employer with a question on the article he was writing, it could be one of his many contacts out there in the real world with some nugget of fraudulent wisdom, he didn’t dare allow himself to think it was from her.

&&&&&&&&&&

He spent months thinking it would be her and when it wasn’t, he drank like the proverbial fish, cursing the sky, the ground, the house, the couch, the wall, the bottle, the scattered relics of his mind. He sank lower and lower knowing she was moving higher, moving farther away from him with every passing second. Then, mid-March, not having had any human contact since the last time he saw her, he woke from a two-day drenched stupor to a scratching sound on the front porch.

Yanking open the door, determined to catch whatever government asshole was trying to bug/wire/explode his front porch, he instead found a mangy, little orange kitten clawing at the door, defiantly meowing in the tiniest voice he’d ever heard, demanding some sort of cat reward because he had deigned to open the door for her.

And given he still had some kind of soul lingering inside, he regarded that cat and that cat regarded him back until, “if you have fleas, I’m going to throw you right back out.”

&&&&&&&&&&

He had to take a shower and take a cab to the vet office he found in the phone book. He had to take that same cab to the pet store to buy a carrier and food. He then had to take the cab back home to settle the aforementioned cat on a nest of blankets because she was tired from her shots. He didn’t think about all the money he’d shelled out in an afternoon for a furball that would probably end up hating him just like the rest of the world did.

But, oddly, that damn cat loved him, cuddled him, kneaded him, purred at him, yelled at him, tripped him, tried to kill him once a day by napping directly on his face the moment he fell asleep. He found himself having to make sure he was paying enough attention to take care of it and keep it alive.

Somewhere along the way, he realized he needed to keep himself alive if not for himself but for that damn cat.

He named her Frohike Langley Byers because of her stubborn, insistent nature that everything go her way. Her immediate nickname became FLB or Flab except when she was filled with static electricity, at which time she temporarily became Fro.

It took him until May to realize, heart-searing painfully, that he was managing to take care of a cat. He couldn’t get himself showered and he still slept half the time in the shelter of the basement, door locked and radio on but he could always remember to feed Flab.

He couldn’t take care of his Scully but he could take care of a nine pound ball of fur.

He held one of their purchased guns to his head that night, his life culminating in six hours of self-destructive thoughts, tortured tears and one needy animal who sat on the table across from him, legs tucked under her, eyes big and blue and never leaving his.

He saw Scully in those blue eyes.

He saw Scully in that orange hair.

He saw unconditional love in that damn cat.

He put the gun away at sunrise and spent the next week taking bars from windows and boards from doors.

&&&&&&&&

The blinking icon was an email from her.

“Dear Mulder,

I’m still here and I’m so proud of you.

Love, Scully.”

&&&&&&&

“Dear Scully,

I’m still here as well. Bars are down. Meds are up. I have a cat. She had blue eyes.

Love, Mulder.”

&&&&&&&&

It was the only Christmas ornament she had in the house, the only decoration she had in the house. She hung it from the lamp by her bed and rummaged through her single dresser until she unearthed a ginormous, gray, cable-knit, Irish fisherman’s sweater that she hadn’t worn in several years. Stripping to her underwear, she pulled it over her head, savoring the memories that came with it; memories of Chicago and cold and hot chocolate and Jacuzzis and Mulder, pure and beautiful and untouched by the world.

She fell asleep curled in bed, having what quite possibly was the first decent night sleep in almost two years.

&&&&&&&&

Mulder slid into bed as well, cat in position on Scully’s pillow, waiting patiently for him to go to sleep so she could curve against the top of his head, paws on his forehead, tongue lapping his hair for a moment before she was satisfied her person was okay and she could rest as well.


End file.
